Live Octopus Consumption, The Real World Brooklyn and the Award Winning NYCity News Service

Some more great news this week: The NYCity News Service took Best News Site honors at the first annual eduStyle Awards ceremony. The recognition is particularly gratifying because we didn’t enter this contest – they found us. We also beat out some quality competition: Virginia Tech and Boston University were the other finalists.

The award is another tribute to your fine work. Here are some of the latest examples:

Claudia Cruz traveled to the Dominican town of Sánchez where she found that the government has yet to provide promised new housing for many folks who lost their homes to devastating landslides.

The Real World is coming to Red Hook, Jessica Firger reports for The Brooklyn Paper.

Speaking of reality TV, Craig Thompson talked to some participants in the controversial new show The Baby Borrowers for this babble.com piece.

Elephants let their feet do the talking, Shuka Kalantari reports for Quest, a mutli-media science site put together by Northern California Public TV and Radio station KQED. Shuka also has been working for KPFA radio. She did a segment for Voices of the Middle East and North African about a photo exhibit called, “Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women.”

Clark Merrefield reports on a deal to preserve a 582-acre ranch in this Point Reyes Light article.

Damian Ghigliotty shows the value of follow up in this Crain’s New York Business article about the debut of a new law requiring owners of large stores to provide a recycling bin for plastic bags.

Linnea Covington wrote about a band that’s bringing the Balkans to Brooklyn. Check out her profile of Slavic Soul Party in New York Press.

Dan Macht assembled a slide show for the telegraph.co.uk showing a recreation of the Battle of Waterloo. He also did some rewrite on a story about a battle of another sort: Madonna‘s alleged marital woes.

In our alumni corner, Sebastian Bednarski produce a video for the nypost.com about well-traveled soccer superstar David Beckham.